The present invention relates to devices and methods for facilitating putting a bracelet on a wrist. In particular, the present invention relates to devices and methods that assist someone putting on a bracelet which has a clasp closure. More particularly, the present invention relates to devices and methods for putting on a bracelet without someone else's assistance.
Putting a clasp-closure bracelet on one's own wrist, and securing the clasp, can be difficult simply because a person normally needs to balance the bracelet on the back of the wrist during the process. The typical series of movements is placing the bracelet across the wrist with its free ends dangling downwards, then grasping the dangling spring ring of the clasp with the thumb and fore-finger, then opening the spring ring by pulling its tab back with the thumb's finger nail while the clasp is held about its outer circumference between the thumb and the fore-finger, then catching the jump ring dangling at the other end of the bracelet in the open mouth of the spring ring without releasing the tab until the jump ring is caught, and then releasing the tab of the spring ring, permitting it to slide back to its normally closed position.
Such a procedure for putting on a clasp-closure bracelet is typically not only awkward but frustrating because the required grip on the spring ring is so easily lost when a person is trying to catch the jump ring. It is far easier to join the two ends of a bracelet using two hands, namely one hand to hold the spring ring open and the other hand to place the jump ring into the open mouth of the spring ring. This is how one person would fasten a bracelet on the wrist of another person. Obviously a person fastening a bracelet to their own wrist cannot handle the clasp in that manner because the hand just above or past the wrist cannot reach back to a bracelet balanced on the wrist. In other words, when a bracelet is balanced on a wrist, only the other hand is free to handle it. Such a bracelet is of course routinely one that, when closed, is too small to slide over the hand. (Bracelets of larger circumferences, or of sufficient elasticity to be stretched to a larger circumference, can of course be fastened using both hands, and after fastening they can be slid over the hand onto the wrist. Such bracelets, however, do not require, and typically do not have, clasp closures in the first instance.)
Heretofore there have been many devices developed to alleviate the problems encountered in putting on a bracelet, including the devices described in: U.S. Pat. No. 6,854,625 which issued on Feb. 15, 2005 to Tedeschi; U.S. Pat. No. 6,036,065 which issued on Mar. 14, 2000 to Wofford et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,934,526 which issued on Aug. 10, 1999 to Rosenbaum et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,709,327 which issued Jan. 20, 1998 to LaMacchia et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,405,066 which issued Apr. 11, 1995 to Fakier; U.S. Pat. No. 4,779,312 which issued on Oct. 25, 1988 to Carlson; and U.S. Pat. No. 2,926,875 which issued on Mar. 1, 1960 to Hoye. Nonetheless the need for a down-to-earth, yet effective, device in the marketplace continues.